Kaitlin and Mark

Alyssa and I met up with Mark and Kaitlin down at the Arena yesterday afternoon for a cold, cold, cold engagement shoot. Luckily, we had a really cool couple ( hey, a horrible pun, my bad!) to work with and as soon as the shutters started flying we were good to go :).

The only request they had for their shoot was that we somehow incorporate the love of their sports lives, the Buffalo Sabres. Not a problem - the little area right next to the HSBC Arena is suprisingly rad for photography. 

Besides - it is ALWAYS easy to take awesome photos of couples in love with smiles like Mark and Kaitlin's.

This is definitely one of my favorite shots we took when we headed out front for a few minutes. We were bummed we couldn't get inside, but the Arena is locked down tight on non-game Sundays.

Since we were so close, we decided to explore the Naval Park and some of the surrounding urban stuff. We're always looking for rock, brick or anykind of cool wall texture to use in our photos...

Alyssa and I sometimes just drive around looking for cool places we'd like to shoot - and we saw this random little place a while back...so we filed it away in our "visual notebook". I still have NO idea what this structure is for, but a cool, round opening in a brick wall is just about right for some fun pics.

Aaahh - and Alyssa apparently caught me wearing my ridiculous neon-green biking gloves. Thankfully you can't see them all that well here, but they're the only thing I have that's thin enough to use on my camera's controls AND keep my hands functioning. You see, one night in Afghanistan we got stuck in this village during a snowstorm and a bunch of us got minor cases of frostbite (we had a thermometer that stopped working at -20, so it was frickin cold). Ever since my hands stop working in the cold....hence my ridiculous gloves. Maybe I could play receiver for the Seahawks...

I think Kaitlin is a straight up classic beauty with an easy smile - you're a lucky dude, Mark!

Really cute couple - they held hands the entire shoot whenever they could.

So - to wrap up our frigid shoot, we were so close to the light rail that we had to go shoot a little at the station...I'm a sucker for a good piggy-back ride shot.

And then we wanted to do the "blur the train car in the background" shot, which we've never done with a couple here in Buffalo...so we waited, and waited, and waited...and we thought the stupid thing was NEVER going to come...and then it came out of nowhere! Apparently the gap between trains is a little long on Sundays...

Great couple, fun shoot! Thanks Mark and Kaitlin. Alyssa and I hope everybody has a great week if you're heading back to work after the holiday. If anybody is going to be at the Sabres game tomorrow night (Tuesday), stop down and see me - I'll be crouching down by the ice somewhere with a lens stuck through the glass for at least some of the action :).